Sunday, February 07, 1999
Hallmark's Hall of Fame tradition
Tonight's 'Night Ride Home' is beloved series' 200th telecast in 49 years
BY JOHN KIESEWETTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
And if you care enough to watch the very best TV, you never miss a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation.
Hallmark, the only lasting legacy from the Golden Age of Television, reaches a milestone today with Night Ride Home, its 200th telecast in 48 years.
Although the productions have shifted from Shakespeare and Shaw to more contemporary stories, Hallmark has lived up to its reputation — now an expectation — of delivering programs deserving of being TV's most honored drama series.
“One of the few things that's imbedded in the American minds is that a Hallmark Hall of Fame is a Hallmark Hall of Fame,” says Leslie Moonves, CBS Television president and CEO.
“That tradition has gone on for so many years, that I think people genuinely expect to get what they get,” he says.
What viewers get are powerful, emotional stories unlike any other movies on broadcast TV. Hallmark films are made with bigger budgets, often bigger stars, and always with fewer commercial interruptions than a network movie-of-the-week.
Why?
“Because we think it's a terrific way to present our products to the country,” says Brad R. Moore, a former Procter & Gamble Co. executive who has supervised Hallmark Hall of Fame programs since 1983.
“The whole purpose is to equate Hallmark Cards with quality and good taste. So when the audience is finished watching for two hours, they feel better about Hallmark than before,” says Mr. Moore, president of Hallmark Hall of Fame Productions, a division of the family-owned card manufacturer.
Hallmark Chairman Donald J. Hall will mark the occasion today with a rare TV appearance, thanking viewers for their loyal support for the 200 telecasts (including repeats). A big celebration is planned for 2001, when the series marks its 50th anniversary, Mr. Moore says.
In Night Ride Home, Rebecca De Mornay plays a grief-stricken woman who shuts out her husband (Keith Carradine) and re-examines her marriage after their son (Jordan Brower) dies from falling off a horse.
It's produced by Glenn Jordan, whose Hallmark credits include Glenn Close's Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991) and Promise, the James Garner-James Woods film (1986) that which is the most-honored two-hour movie in TV history (winning five Emmys, two Golden Globes, a Peabody award, a Humanitas Prize and a Christopher Award).
@subhed:Distinctive from start
@body:
From TV's infancy, the Hallmark Hall of Fame has delivered distinctive programming.
Mr. Hall's father, J.C., started the series on Christmas Eve in 1951 with Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera ever commissioned for television. (It has been restaged live, or repeated, six times in the 200 broadcasts.)
In 1953, the Hallmark Hall of Fame was the first to bring Shakespeare to television, when Maurice Evans starred in Hamlet. The company claims that more people saw the telecast on April 23, 1953, than had seen the play in the 350 years since Shakespeare wrote it.
Shortly after Mr. Moore arrived at Hallmark from P&G in 1982, he revitalized the series by looking for inspirational relationship stories particularly appealing to women ages 25-54.
He also decided that Hallmark should develop its own projects, working with literary agents for authors and playwrights, rather than rely on Hollywood production companies. The new philosophy produced immediate results.
Love Is Never Silent, a 1985 film with Mare Winningham as a woman raised by deaf parents, won the Emmy for best drama/comedy special.
Promise followed in 1986, in which a man (Mr. Garner) reluctantly fulfills his vow to take care of his schizophrenic brother (Mr. Woods).
Mr. Woods and Mr. Garner teamed up three years later for My Name Is Bill W., about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. Mr. Woods took home the Emmy for best actor that year, beating out Robert Duval and Tommy Lee Jones from Lonesome Dove.
Making the investment
Hallmark Hall of Fame films have become TV's gold standard because of the financial commitment by the Hall family, estimated to be in excess of $30 million a year.
“They've put their money where their mouth is. They spend more money on production, so the film you get is better,” says Mr. Moonves of CBS, which will exclusively air Hall of Fame films through the 50th anniversary in 2001 and into spring of 2002.
Hallmark Hall of Fame films often have twice the budget of broadcast network films. The company pays more for story rights, talent and production.
Other differences are:
• Hallmark movies run 8-10 minutes longer (about 103 minutes total) because Hallmark Cards fully sponsors the film, and takes fewer commercial breaks.
• Unlike most network movies, Hallmark always films on location. Hallmark usually shoots for 24 days, while most movies-of-the-week are done in 18-20 days.
• The Hallmark reputation for excellence — and bigger budget — attracts feature film and stage performers like Ms. Close, who starred as a 1910 mail-order bride in Sarah, Plain and Tall.
Hallmark productions “are much more like the movies that inspired us to be involved in film in the first place, where the stories are kind of distinctive and different, the look is different (and) the tone is kind of unusual,” says John Kent Harrison, who directed two 1997 Hallmark films, William Faulkner's Old Man and What the Deaf Man Heard.
Mr. Moore bristles when anyone hints that Hallmark Hall of Fame is a dusty old relic from the days of Kraft Music Hall, The Bell Telephone Hour, Alcoa Presents and The U.S. Steel Hour.
“In terms of ratings, we've just had the best year we've ever had,” he says.
The four original Hallmark presentations last season finished in the Top 10 among more than 200 TV movies: What The Deaf Man Heard (No. 1), Ellen Foster (No. 4), The Echo of Thunder (No. 5) and The Love Letter (No. 9).
Deaf Man and Sarah, Plain and Tall are the two highest-rated movies or miniseries of this decade, he points out. Old Man was the No. 5 movie of the 1996-97 TV season, even though it starred Arliss Howard, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Leo Burmester, hardly marquee names.
“Even when Hallmark has no "names' in their shows, they do huge numbers,” says CBS' Mr. Moonves.
All-star casts
The list of Hallmark Hall of Fame performers through the years is like reading a Who's Who of Film and Theater: Richard Burton, Robert Redford, Charles Dutton, Henry Fonda, Ruth Gordon, Julie Harris, Richard Chamberlain, Mark Hamill, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, Nathan Lane, Sarah Jessica Parker, Claude Raines, Ian Richardson, Donald Sutherland, Jessica Tandy, Faye Wray and Orson Welles.
Winston Churchill and Field Marshall Montgomery appeared as themselves in The Other World of Winston Churchill (1964).
Even in the early years, Hallmark wasn't only works by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen and Eugene O'Neill.
The Hall of Fame produced Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (with ice skater Dick Button in 1958), Dial M For Murder (1958), Kiss Me Kate (1958) and Arsenic and Old Lace (1962) with Tony Randall, Tom Bosley and Boris Karloff.
Over the years, Hallmark has mixed the serious with the historical and the lyrical:
• Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1964) with Jason Robards.
• The Fantasticks (1964) with Ricardo Montalban, Bert Lahr and John Davidson).
• Pinocchio (1968) with Burl Ives and Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits.
• Teacher, Teacher (1969) with David McCallum.
• You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown (1973) with Barry Livingston, Wendell Burton and Ruby Persson.
• Truman at Potsdam (1976) with Ed Flanders and John Houseman.
• Peter Pan (1976) with Danny Kaye and Mia Farrow.
• Casey Stengel (1981), a one-man show with Charles Durning as the former New York Yankees' skipper.
• The Marva Collins Story (1981) with Cicely Tyson and Morgan Freeman.
Fresh commercials
What also makes each Hall of Fame presentation unique are the commercials.
Hallmark produces several new spots specifically for each movie, which air during February, May and November ratings' sweeps periods — which coincidentally fall during the peak greeting card sales for Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Christmas.
Viewers also probably don't realize that a Hallmark Hall of Fame has less commercial clutter, since the company controls all the advertising spots (except for the 10 p.m. station break).
“We may run only eight or nine commercials, though a spot may run anywhere between 90 seconds up to 21/2 minutes. Most TV movies have 45-50 commercials in two hours,” Mr. Moore says.
“As our founder said, "We'd like to make a few good impressions rather than a lot of bad impressions.”
The Hallmark Hall of Fame has certainly succeeded in that regard. It's one of TV's greatest natural wonders.
As the Emmy folks said in 1961, when they presented company founder J.C. Hall and his company the first-ever award to a sponsor: “Thank you, Mr. Hall, for caring enough to send the very best in television.”
John Kiesewetter is Enquirer TV/radio critic. His column appears Monday and Wednesday. Write: 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202; fax: 768-8330.
John Kiesewetter is Enquirer TV/radio critic. Write him at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, 45202.
